A Bedtime Story
by nikkilittle
Summary: The Cheshire Cat tells a bedtime story to a group of very bright Gnome children. Alternate Universe with a modern, American Alice in a real Wonderland.


A Bedtime Story

by Nikki Little

There's a first time for everything I suppose. The gnome lady who runs their little library had asked me to tell a story for their late children's hour, and so off I trudged. I was incredulous that they would invite me to tell a story given my long history of eccentricity. However, I hadn't done anything really terrible like eating a gnome child or dangling one from a tree fifty feet up, so I suppose there were worse choices than me to deliver a story. Their usual victim for this sort of work is Alice, who is quite a celebrity among the gnomes, although the gnome women try to keep her out of sight of the gnome men as much as possible these days because the gnome men stare at her whenever she's around.

I walked in to the children's section of the little gnome library and curled up near the cozy fireplace. Evenings in Wonderland have just the faintest hint of a delightful chill. There were about a dozen gnome children waiting for me on the carpet. There were no chairs, but there were pillows scattered about and the children leaned on them. There was no introduction as I am as well-known in Wonderland as Alice. "Are you all ready for a story?" I asked.

"Yes, we're ready!" several of the children chimed in unison. Perhaps I should mention that gnomes have unusually long life spans by human standards. On average, they live about 500 years, and it takes them about 100 years to reach adult development. Needless to say, with that much extra time available for education, these gnome children put human children to shame with the breadth of their knowledge. Alice finds them slightly intimidating, but charming. They are unusually well-behaved - by human standards, at least. I had an unusual idea for a story. I call this type of story a "hypothetical." It's a "What if...?" story based on real people and real events.

"I've got something unusual for you all. I've got a story which didn't happen, but could have happened. It leads to a situation at the end in which you have to decide what would be the proper course of action. Shall I start?" Yes, the gnome children all nodded their heads in assent. Thus began the first story hour in Wonderland delivered by a cat.

"In a place called Wonderland, only a little time ago, lived a strange-looking man whose face was hideous, but whose heart was gentle. The endless tragedies in the world above distressed him to no end, and one day, after an abortive attempt by his friend Alice to teach some politicians a lesson, Hatter decided that he had his own lessons to teach. Taking a group of about 100 Gnome men with him, Hatter went to the windswept and barren Kerguelen Islands which were uninhabited at that time. Hatter and his Gnomes went about rebuilding the abandoned research station and whaling facilities, and, after several weeks of very hard work, they had a set of barracks which, while not-too-comfortable, were sufficient as a place of respite. Or exile."

"Hatter returned to Wonderland and took several of his bongs and a dozen containers of Caterpillar's smoke portal powder for about 36 hours of rousting politicians, and the rich people who more-or-less own them, from bed. Now Hatter is not a rude man, so he always introduced himself. However he did not explain, for he knew that the politicians would deny everything that they were guilty of. After a very long and sleep-deprived 36 hours or so, and several return trips to Caterpillar's Oracle Cave to replenish his supply of smoke portal powder, Hatter's task had been accomplished. Every politician on the globe, along with the super-rich people who owned them, was now exiled to the recently constructed barracks of the Kerguelen Islands. Hatter took every technical device they had and simply abandoned them there. "I'll be back in a month," he said. Now, of course, Hatter had left plenty of canned food and cheap staples in the cupboards of the barracks, and the kitchens were well-stocked with the basics, but luxuries were non-existent. It was the intent of Hatter that these well-heeled privileged people would find out what it was like to eat as an ordinary person who could not afford expensive cuts of meat and fish, and who never, ever drank wine because its expense was out of the question. Of course water was no problem at all. There were several fast-running streams on the islands which had water pure enough to drink without any treatment at all. Nevertheless, Hatter had set up a small slow-sand water filtration system which provided water to the taps in the barracks. He left instructions on how to maintain the filter, and the rest was up to the politicians if they did not wish to go dipping water out of the streams."

"Now, as you might expect, the people of the world were in for quite a shock when they woke up the next morning to a world where the people who controlled their lives had all suddenly vanished. With no one to give the orders, and confusion reigning, the guns in all the wars fell temporarily silent as the ordinary civil servants and clerks who normally labored in the background found themselves compelled to fill in for their absent bosses. Everyone agreed that a temporary halt to hostilities was the first order of the day. It didn't take long for the bean counters to discover that, absent the relentless coffer-draining expenses of war, their countries suddenly had funds for investment in such things as infrastructure, education, social programs, public housing, public transportation, and a host of other needs that had been neglected for so long. The poor countries of the world, so long used to the bullying of structural adjustment programs that required them to open their markets to unrestricted imports which destroyed their own local industries and food production, now found themselves in a position to make decisions based on their own needs. The international organizations which had tormented them for so long seemed to have evaporated into thin air. Most of the richer countries, focused on their own problems, simply told the poorer countries to forget about paying off their debts as those debts would never be repaid anyway. If there's one thing you can count on a low-level bean counter for, it's the ability to recognize bad debts. They wrote off the debts of the poor countries both for the sake of human compassion and practicality."

"As the weeks went by, it became apparent that the world was slowly becoming a better place for all as ordinary people, without the need to pander to corporate shareholders, made decisions for their countries as best they could on behalf of all. Although they were never elected, the superiority of the results they produced were apparent to all, and one-by-one the countries of the world held new elections under new electoral systems to replace the absent leaders. By the end of the month, all of the exiled politicians had been replaced, and the rich people exiled with them had been forgotten."

"Hatter returned to the Kerguelen Islands and hooked up a satellite television set to allow the exiles to view the news from one country after another. It quickly became apparent to all of the exiles that their countries did not want them back. "So what am I going to do with all of you?" asked Hatter."

"The story ends there. What would all of you do if you were Hatter?"

"Cheshire, you said none of this really happened, right?" asked one gnome boy.

"No, of course not. As much as Hatter would like to do such a thing, a positive outcome is by no means certain. He talked about it once at a party celebrating Alice's return from you-know-where, but it was just talk. The idea of kidnapping people was something that he could not stomach even if it were a sure way of improving the world. To Hatter, there are some things that just cannot be justified. To Hatter, the means to accomplish a goal must be as admirable as the ends themselves. In this respect, Hatter is, if anything, even more of a dreamer than Alice."

"Cheshire, what would you have done if you had had to decide what to do with all of those politicians and rich people?"

"First, I would like to know what each of you would do."

"I'd leave them there!" said one of the gnome boys. "Nobody wants them back!"

"Aren't you concerned about the morality of just leaving them stranded there?" I asked.

"Is it any worse than the practice in the world above of locking bad people up in prisons and leaving them there for years, even decades?"

I had to admit that the gnome child had me there. I had long thought that the mass incarceration of the world above, especially in victimless crimes, was absurd. Why, they even locked people up for smoking weeds! One weed, tobacco, was perfectly legal even though it killed people by the millions. Another weed, which didn't kill people, but got them just as intoxicated as alcohol - and threw in free trips as a bonus - would land a human in the pokey with the utmost of haste. It made no sense at all to me. One of the gnome girls had a different idea.

"I'd send them back, but not to their old jobs. This time they would have to do something useful."

"And what would that useful something be?" I asked.

"I'd have them working on farms, working in utilities, or making stuff that everyone needs in workshops."

"In the world above, useful things - and lots and lots of useless things - are made in what are known as factories. There aren't quite so many of those as there used to be in the country above us. Now they have most things made in other countries where people are paid less for their work."

"Oh, yeah. Money. In the world above, everything revolves around money. It's like it's their freakin' god," exclaimed an older gnome girl. It dawned on me that she might be watching too much television news from the world above. The library sported one of Hatter's rebuilt televisions. We had secretly tapped into the Asylum's cable TV network.

"What would you do?" I asked the youngest and smallest gnome boy.

"I'd leave them on the island with all the supplies that they need to make a reasonable, but not luxurious, life for themselves. Why send them back where they might start stirring up wars and causing trouble again?"

I had to admit that I was beginning to understand why Alice found these gnome children a bit intimidating. Smart little buggers they were! One gnome boy asked me what I would do.

"I would have dumped them all in the streets of the wrong countries with no money and no ID." Heh, heh, heh... What else would a grinning, evil cat do?

The End

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. Electronic Arts (EA) owns the rights.

Version 2


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